Peter Frankopan | |
---|---|
Born | |
Occupation | Historian |
Spouse | Jessica Sainsbury |
Parent(s) | Louis Doimi de Lupis, Count de Lupis Ingrid Detter de Frankopan |
Relatives | Lady Nicholas Windsor (sister) |
Peter Frankopan (born 22 March 1971) [1] is a British historian, writer, and hotelier. He is a professor of global history at Worcester College, Oxford and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. [2] He is best known for his 2015 book The Silk Roads .
Frankopan is the second of five children born to Croatian Louis Doimi de Frankopan (1939–2018) and Swedish-born barrister and professor of international law Ingrid Detter. His elder sister is Lady Nicholas Windsor. [3] His father is Louis Doimi de Lupis, who claimed to be a member of the Frankopan family.
He attended Eton College [4] and then received a degree in Byzantine history from Jesus College, Cambridge, before getting his D.Phil at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is a senior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, and director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. [5]
His areas of focus are the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Russia, as well as the interdependence of Islam and Christianity. He has also studied Greek literature of the Middle Ages. [6]
Frankopan's first book of history, The First Crusade: The Call from the East, was published in 2012. [7] The book received a five-star review from Nicholas Shakespeare in The Telegraph . He called it a "persuasive and bracing work" and said "Peter Frankopan is not yet well known, but he deserves to be." [8] Michael Dirda, in The Washington Post, praised this "carefully researched book." [9] Thomas F. Madden, specialist on the Crusades, seems more critical:
There are today so many histories of the First Crusade jostling for shelf space that new authors are forced to find ways to differentiate theirs from all of the others. In some cases this has led to genuinely innovative approaches; in others, rather awkward attempts at novelty have resulted. This is one of the latter. [10]
In 2015, Frankopan's book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World was published. Writing in the Telegraph, Bettany Hughes praised it as a "charismatic and essential book", [11] while Anthony Sattin, writing in The Guardian , called it "ambitious" and "full of insight but let down by factual errors". [12] Frankopan's follow-up book, The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World (Bloomsbury Publishing), was published in 2018.
In March 2023, Bloomsbury published Frankopan's The Earth Transformed: An Untold History , described as a history of the world, written from a fundamentally environmental perspective. It was reviewed in The New York Review of Books by Christopher de Bellaigue ( quod vide ). [13]
In 2002, Frankopan and his wife Jessica opened Cowley Manor, a boutique hotel and spa on a historic estate in the Cotswolds. They have since expanded their hotel chain, which they named A Curious Group of Hotels, to include the Portobello Hotel in London, Canal House in Amsterdam and L'Hotel Paris in Paris. [14] The restaurant in L'Hotel Paris has been awarded a Michelin star. [15]
Frankopan played for the Croatian national cricket team. In 2015, he said "That’s the achievement I’m proudest of – playing cricket for my country." [5] He also plays for the Authors XI cricket team with other British writers and contributed a chapter to the book that team members collectively wrote about their first season playing together, The Authors XI: A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon (2013). [16]
Frankopan and his wife Jessica, daughter of Sir Tim Sainsbury, have four children and live in Oxford. [4] Together, they oversee a £14 million trust funded by her family's supermarket fortune. [15]
Constantinople became the capital of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine the Great in 330. Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, Constantinople remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish capital then moved to Ankara. Officially renamed Istanbul in 1930, the city is today the largest city in Europe, straddling the Bosporus strait and lying in both Europe and Asia, and the financial centre of Turkey.
Year 1205 (MCCV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Year 1183 (MCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic rule. While Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, by the 11th century the Seljuk takeover of the region threatened local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself. The earliest initiative for the First Crusade began in 1095 when Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military support from the Council of Piacenza in the empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, during which Pope Urban II supported the Byzantine request for military assistance and also urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin Christian armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate. However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army's 1202 siege of Zara and the 1204 sack of Constantinople, rather than the conquest of Egypt as originally planned. This led to the Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae or the partition of the Byzantine Empire by the Crusaders and their Venetian allies leading to a period known as Frankokratia, or "Rule of the Franks" in Greek.
Anna Komnene, commonly Latinized as Anna Comnena, was a Byzantine Greek princess and historian. She is the author of the Alexiad, an account of the reign of her father, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Her work constitutes the most important primary source of Byzantine history of the late 11th and early 12th centuries, as well as of the early Crusades. Although she is best known as the author of the Alexiad, Anna played an important part in the politics of the time and attempted to depose her brother, John II Komnenos, as emperor in favour of her husband, Nikephoros.
The Alexiad is a medieval historical and biographical text written around the year 1148, by the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene, daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. It was written in a form of artificial Attic Greek. Anna described the political and military history of the Byzantine Empire during the reign of her father, thus providing a significant account on the Byzantium of the High Middle Ages. Among other topics, the Alexiad documents the Byzantine Empire's interaction with the Crusades and highlights the conflicting perceptions of the East and West in the early 12th century. It does not mention the schism of 1054 – a topic which is very common in contemporary writing. It documents firsthand the decline of Byzantine cultural influence in eastern and western Europe, particularly in the West's increasing involvement in its geographic sphere. The Alexiad was paraphrased in vernacular medieval Greek in mid-14th century to increase its readability, which testifies to the lasting interest in the work.
Tatikios or Taticius was an Eastern Roman general of Turkish origin during the reign of Alexios I Komnenos. His name is also rendered as Tetigus, Tatizius, Tatitius, Tatic, or Tetig.
The Chronicle of the Morea is a long 14th-century history text, of which four versions are extant: in French, Greek, Italian and Aragonese. More than 9,000 lines long, the Chronicle narrates events of the Franks' establishment of feudalism in mainland Greece. West European Crusaders settled in the Peloponnese following the Fourth Crusade. The period covered in the Chronicle was 1204 to 1292. It gives significant details on the civic organization of the Principality of Achaia.
The House of Laskaris, Latinized as Lascaris, was a Byzantine Greek noble family which rose to prominence during the late Byzantine period. The members of the family formed the ruling dynasty of the Empire of Nicaea, a Byzantine rump state that existed from the 1204 sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade until the restoration of the Empire under the Palaeologan dynasty in 1261.
The Byzantine economy was among the most robust economies in the Mediterranean for many centuries. Constantinople was a prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly all of Eurasia and North Africa. Some scholars argue that, up until the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century, the Eastern Roman Empire had the most powerful economy in the world. The Arab conquests, however, would represent a substantial reversal of fortunes contributing to a period of decline and stagnation. Constantine V's reforms marked the beginning of a revival that continued until 1204. From the 10th century until the end of the 12th, the Byzantine Empire projected an image of luxury, and the travelers were impressed by the wealth accumulated in the capital. All this changed with the arrival of the Fourth Crusade, which was an economic catastrophe. The Palaiologoi tried to revive the economy, but the late Byzantine state would not gain full control of either the foreign or domestic economic forces.
Thomas Francis Madden is an American historian, a former chair of the history department at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, and director of Saint Louis University's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred in Constantinople during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The eastern half of the Empire survived the conditions that caused the fall of the West in the 5th century AD, and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in the Mediterranean world. The term "Byzantine Empire" was only coined following the empire's demise; its citizens referred to the polity as the "Roman Empire" and to themselves as "Romans". Due to the imperial seat's move from Rome to Byzantium, the adoption of state Christianity, and the predominance of Greek instead of Latin, modern historians continue to make a distinction between the earlier Roman Empire and the later Byzantine Empire.
Samite was a luxurious and heavy silk fabric worn in the Middle Ages, of a twill-type weave, often including gold or silver thread. The word was derived from Old French samit, from medieval Latin samitum, examitum deriving from the Byzantine Greek ἑξάμιτον hexamiton "six threads", usually interpreted as indicating the use of six yarns in the warp. Samite is still used in ecclesiastical robes, vestments, ornamental fabrics, and interior decoration.
The Byzantine Empire's history is generally periodised from late antiquity until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD. From the 3rd to 6th centuries, the Greek East and Latin West of the Roman Empire gradually diverged, marked by Diocletian's formal partition of its administration in 285, the establishment of an eastern capital in Constantinople by Constantine I in 330, and the adoption of Christianity as the state religion under Theodosius I, with others such as Roman polytheism being proscribed. Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use instead of Latin. While there was an unbroken continuity in administration and other features of Roman society, historians have often distinguished the Byzantine epoch from earlier eras in Roman history for reasons including the imperial seat moving from Rome to Constantinople and the predominance of Greek instead of Latin.
Nikephoros Diogenes, Latinized as Nicephorus Diogenes, was presumably a junior Byzantine emperor around 1069–1071. He was born c. 1069 to Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes and Empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa. He was elevated to junior emperor in 1070, although he lost this position when his father was overthrown in 1071. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, after overthrowing Nikephoros III, made Nikephoros doux of Crete, and made him a general. Nikephoros conspired against him in 1094, involving numerous confidants and relatives of Alexios, including Alexios' brother, Adrianos. For this conspiracy, he was blinded, in accordance with Byzantine traditions. After this, he retired to his estates, and spent the last years of his life studying classical literature.
Byzantine silk is silk woven in the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium) from about the fourth century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is a 2015 non-fiction book written by English historian Peter Frankopan, a historian at the University of Oxford. A new abridged edition was illustrated by Neil Packer. The full text is divided into 25 chapters. The author combines the development of the world with the Silk Road.
The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World is a 2017 book by Catherine Nixey. In the book, Nixey argues that early Christians deliberately destroyed classical Greek and Roman cultures and contributed to the loss of classical knowledge. The book was an international bestseller, was translated into 12 languages and was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018. The New York Times called it a “ballista-bolt of a book”. The book received positive reviews from academics such as Peter Frankopan, professor of Global History at Oxford University, and others who praised its style and originality. It received criticism from some scholars of late antiquity and the Middle Ages such as Averil Cameron, who accused it of telling a simplistic, polemical narrative and exaggerating the extent to which early Christians suppressed aspects of older Greek and Roman cultures.
The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of The World is a 2018 non-fiction book by English historian Peter Frankopan. The full text is divided into 5 chapters. The author discusses the recent rise of Asia's economic and geopolitical strength.